Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 3,1): Zeus god of the dark sky (earthquake, clouds, wind, dew, rain, meteorits): Text and notes (Cambridge, 1940)

954 General Conclusions with regard to

said, of Tarsos1. It is therefore of interest to note that Paul of
Tarsos in his speech before the Areiopagos actually quotes the
words used by his fellow-countryman with regard to the Cretan
Zeus—

'For we are also his offspring2,'

and in the same context cites, perhaps from a lost poem by
Epimenides3, Minos' panegyric of the god—

'in him we live, and move, and have our being.'

Paul must have been struck, and struck forcibly, by the Cretan
parallel—a divine child born to be king, hidden in a cave from his
enemies, apparently weak and helpless, yet able to control the stars
in their courses, one with whom his worshippers the world over
could claim kinship, while dependent on him for life, and breath,
and all things4. Truly the cult of Zeus Asterios has once more
landed us on the very confines of Christendom.

Proofs might be multiplied, but I have said enough to show that
the physical basis of the cult of Zeus involved mental, moral, and
spiritual issues, which themselves rose to great heights and were
prophetic of even greater things to come.

Many, if not most, of these sublimer aspects were caught and
canonized when Pheidias at the very zenith of his fame made his
statue of Zeus Olympios for the fifth-century temple in the Altis ■
For a detailed description of it we are in the main dependent 011
the dry paragraphs of Pausanias6, eked out by allusions elsewhere •
It appears that the god, a colossal figure in gold and ivory, sat
enthroned with a Victory likewise of ivory and gold, bearing a fiHe*
and wearing a wreath, in his right hand and a sceptre, embellishe
with various metals8 and topped by an eagle, in his left. He had atl
olive-wreath on his head and golden sandals on his feet, his

■ d>e

1 G. Knaack in Pauly—Wissowa Real-Enc. ii. 391 f. (' Wahrscheinlich wai ^
Farailie...von Tarsos nach Soloi ubergesiedelt; deshalb wohl nennt Asklepiades ^
Myrlea Tarsos als Geburtsort (Vit. I p. 52, 5 [p. 76, 4 ff. Maass 'Acric\riiri&8ris
MupXeapds ev raj ta Jlepl ypa/j-fxariKuiv Tapiria <pf\a\v avrov yeyovtvcu dXX' ov XoKta^
hist. Gr. iii. 299 Muller])'), B. A. Milller De Asclepiade Myrleano Leipzig 1903 p- *3"

2 Acts 17. 28 (cited supra i. 664 n. 3).

3 Supra i. 157 n. 3, 663 n. 2, 664 n. 1. 4 Supra i. 664 f.

6 Supra ii. 757 f. 0 Paus. 5. 11. 1—ii. ct5j

7 Overbeck Schriftquellen p. 125 ff. nos. 692—695, 697—754. A shorter set of e*"gS
with English rendering and brief notes, will be found in H. Stuart Jones Select ^aSg ff.
from Ancient Writers illustrative of the History of Greek Sculpture London 1895 P'
nos. in—114. dd.)

8 Paus. 5. 11. 1 tj 5e dpiaTcpf rod 8eov xelP^ f'f'" (so Porson for xaP^ev
aKTjirrpoy /xer&Wots roTs iraaLV i]v6L(jfx^vov.